Google Hiring 200 Recruiters. NOW!

In what is by now an open secret, Google is hiring 200 recruiters and sourcers for a one-year gig.

Details are sketchy, but Dave Mendoza did post an email about the hire to his site Six Degrees From Dave. The email is from a recruiter for Nelson Staffing and says the firm got a contract from “A Major (and pretty exciting) employer in the South Bay here in N. CA.” The email doesn’t name the employer, but it says Nelson needs to find “200 upbeat and enthusiastic recruiters and sourcers for them — by next week.”

While California’s Bay Area — home to Silicon Valley — is crowded with tech employers, few are big enough to support a need for 200 recruiters. Google is. The company laid off about 100 contract recruiters at the beginning of this year, which was 25 percent of its recruiting force. The fact that the company is now hiring 200 suggests that it expects to grow in 2010.

Some 70 percent of the new positions are at company headquarters. The rest are in other parts of the U.S. and in other parts of the world. All the positions are onsite; “no work from home.”

Incidentally, Mendoza’s post doesn’t mention Google by name. Nor would he confirm that the online search and advertising company is behind the hiring. Other sources, however, did confirm that it is Google.

Mendoza’s blog post has all the details — they are also in the online job postings — but briefly, here’s what Nelson Staffing says it wants:

Recruiting Coordinators (minimum 2 years in an HR support or recruiting support role) – heavy scheduling, process management.

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About the Author

John Zappe is Editor of The Fordyce Letter and a Contributing Editor to ERE.net. John was a newspaper reporter and editor until his geek gene lead him to launch his first website in 1994. Never a recruiter, he instead built online employment sites and sold advertising services to recruiters and employers.

Besides writing for ERE, John consults with digital content operations, focusing on audience development and content marketing. And when he's not doing either, he can be found hiking in the California mountains or competing in canine agility and obedience competitions.

if you do decide to apply, make sure to attach a checkster pre-hire 360 or reference report to your application, it will make you stand out from the rest. A basic free version is available at http://www.checkster.com/web/talent-start.php or you can attach a more advanced version if you are willing to pay $20

http://www.checkster.com Claudine Descheemaecker

if you do decide to apply, make sure to attach a checkster pre-hire 360 or reference report to your application, it will make you stand out from the rest. A basic free version is available at http://www.checkster.com/web/talent-start.php or you can attach a more advanced version if you are willing to pay $20. Google values references high

“…needs to find ‘200 upbeat and enthusiastic recruiters and sourcers for them — by next week.'”
By next week??

Keith Halperin

UPDATES:
I spoke today with a Google recruiter. He says that where he is in Mountain View, he has neither seen nor heard of any sourcers or recruiters being hired/interviewed. (Doesn’t mean they haven’t been, just he hasn’t seen/heard of them.) He says they really need the sourcers….I also have not heard of folks getting past the “interview- with-the-agency” stage. (Again, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, just I haven’t heard about it…)

Googloids, Googloid Wannabes, Nelson and Adecco Folks:
Do you have any more info?

Does anyone know of Recruiters or Sourcers who actually got interviewed for these positions?

Keith Halperin

FURTHER UPDATES

I know of one person who said they interviewed with Google:
“Google is actively recruiting sourcers and schedulers first then will pursue recruiters. I went in for a sourcing position. I submitted for a recruiter position. Because I was more interested in recruiting versus sourcing, they passed on me.”
…………….

My (KH’s) story:

Three weeks ago, I interviewed with Nelson in Redwood City for a sourcing position. At that point, the recruiter gave me the impression that things were going well and my references would be checked in the next day or two, so I notified the references to expect calls. I’ve subsequently tried to find out more from Nelson via: phone and email, but I’ve had no response from them as to updates. I contacted one of my references late last week (who was and is again working at Google) and he said that he hadn’t been contacted by Nelson, and he hasn’t seen or heard of any sourcers or recruiters being either interviewed or hired at his building in Mountain View. (I’d mentioned this part before. -kh)

Eamonn Coleman

jobs are no longer posted so we can assume they filled all 200? OUSTANDING

Barbara Gilmour

I feel that it is too late to apply for these positions BUT does anyone know whether the positions can be worked remotely or do they have to be onsite in California?

Keith Halperin

EVEN FURTHER UPDATES (Sent from a colleague of KH):

11/17- Hi Keith –
I got what I’m sure was a mass email from X X (Nelson) more than a week ago saying there will be followup on our interviews there. Any news?

My interview was with Y (sorry, don’t remember her last name) and she indicated that Nelson had provided lots of resumes to Google’s engineering group, but that they had done nothing in regard to reviewing them and getting feedback to Nelson. Not exactly a shocker, huh?…
The other bit I just remembered is Y talking about the deadlines Google placed on them – and how they were going to have a tough time meeting those deadlines w/out feedback from Google. It sounded like a catch-22.

When a then-emerging Google recruited engineer Brian Reid in the summer of 2002, it appeared to have landed a Silicon Valley superstar. Reid had managed the team that built one of the first Internet search engines at AltaVista. He’d helped co-found the precursor company to Adobe Systems. He’d even worked on Apollo 17.

But within two years, Google decided that the 54-year-old Reid was not a “cultural fit” for the company and fired him, allegedly after co-workers had described him as “an old man,” “slow,” “sluggish” and “an old fuddy-duddy.” Reid responded with an age discrimination lawsuit blasting Google’s 20-something culture for shunning his generation in the workplace.

Now, Reid’s long-running legal feud with Google has reached the California Supreme Court, which this week will hear arguments that will determine if the age discrimination allegations will ever be aired to a jury.

In a case that has attracted attention from employers’ and workers’ rights groups across the state because it could help define how much evidence is needed to press an age bias lawsuit, the justices are reviewing a San Jose appeals court’s conclusion that Reid is entitled to take his case to trial because he’d presented enough evidence for “a fact finder to conclude Google engaged in age discrimination.”

Google’s lawyers appealed that decision, saying it was flawed and that Reid has offered up only a collection of “stray remarks” that do not merit a trial. In court papers, they insist Reid was fired because he simply was not a good fit for the company, not because of his age. The justices will hear arguments from the two sides Wednesday in San Francisco.

“There are plenty of older people at Google who do very well and do fit,” said company spokesman Andrew Peterson.

Reid, who now works at Redwood City-based Internet Systems Consortium, referred questions to his lawyer, Lorraine Ocheltree, who declined to comment with the case pending. But in court papers, Reid alleges that Google’s poor treatment of older workers started at the top with co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and filtered through management. He maintains he is owed tens of millions of dollars lost in stock options from his firing.

The allegations against Google, which is described as a workplace where it was a negative to not participate in snowboarding trips or lunchtime roller hockey games, could put the company in an awkward spot if the Supreme Court does allow the case to go to trial. But close Google watchers say they do not hear much buzz that the company is hostile to older workers, at least these days.

Google declined to disclose a breakdown of its workforce by age or say how many employees are at least 50 years old.

“We’re talking about a case that’s happening now, that’s reaching the Supreme Court now, from a company that when this all happened it was six or seven years ago,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a leading online newsletter that follows Google and other search companies. “In Internet dog years, that’s like 60 to 70 years. Perhaps the culture was even more youngish back then — it doesn’t mean it’s the case now.”

Reid was originally hired as director of operations and engineering, a top job at Google. While he dealt with the company’s top brass, his primary boss was Wayne Rosing, who was 55 at the time, a fact the company cites as evidence that older workers other than Reid could thrive at Google. Court papers say it was Rosing who two years later told Reid he was not a “cultural fit” when his job was terminated, a decision signed off on by CEO Eric Schmidt.

In addition to the “old fuddy-duddy” type comments from co-workers, Reid’s case includes accounts from experts who say Google simply preferred younger workers. “Older workers were perceived as not being able to think out of the box, as not having the necessary energy to work the expected hours, nor to have the focus required to maintain Google’s competitive advantage,” Rebecca LaBelle, a former Google recruiter, said in a court declaration.

But Google has invoked a legal theory that an age discrimination case cannot be founded on a collection of “stray remarks” and circumstantial evidence.

The Supreme Court’s decision will not address the gist of Reid’s allegations. Instead, the court has taken the case to take a fresh look at the scope of the “stray remarks” theory in employment cases. As a result, a host of organizations have lined up on both sides of the case, including AARP on Reid’s behalf and the California Employment Law Council for Google.

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